There's been a flurry of activity in the downloadable movies space over the past few days, as studios and other content providers strive to take advantage of the highly effective online distribution model.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan today announced a "Digital Action Plan" to help convince Australians to upgrade from analogue to digital TV.

Coonan pinned the blame for the slow take-up of digital on a lack of education. Apparently, the general public has little knowledge regarding the benefits of making the switch, according to Senator Coonan.

Back in May I posted a piece called Dumb and dumber: copyright law change. It was a commentary on the Federal Government's proposed changes to the Copyright Act which, in my view, would be impossible to police and perpetuate the absurdity of placing almost everyone in technical breach of the laws.

After months of tinkering with the proposed legislation, the Government's Copyright Amendment Bill 2006 is now ready to be passed into law. And it's clear that they obviously didn't listen to what I was saying.

Krzysztof Kononowicz and his technicolor sweater are currently the big topic of conversation around water coolers in Poland.

The interesting thing about this is the speed at which it's taken off. It's only been a week since the video went up on YouTube and ten or so days since the aspiring politician made his fateful TV appearance.

Microsoft's Zune media player was released in the US today. There are already shots of the unboxing and installation processes appearing on the web, but one particular error screen caught our eye.

It shows two women and what appears to be a man lying on the grass. The man and one of the women appear to be kissing, while the other woman appears to be in the midst of ... well she's either in hysterics or having an orgasm.

Earlier this year Dell copped a lot of flak over a spate of exploding laptops. We know now that they were all caused by faulty Sony lithium-ion batteries, now the subject of a wide-ranging product recall.

There was that graphic photo of the Dell laptop catching fire in Tokyo that finally provided undeniable evidence that something was not right.

Now there's a video that shows you what can happen when a lithium-ion battery malfunctions. It's pretty amazing ...

Interested in seeing what Australia looked like over 150 years ago? You could download a flat image of an old map, but Google now offers a more elegant method.

Google has just pushed through an update for Google Earth, adding a new layer called "Rumsey Historical Maps". This allows users to overlay the typical Google Earth globe with historical maps dating as far back as 1710.

Is democracy being eroded by technology or evolving it? I guess it comes down to what you define as technology. There are those electronic polling booths and if we encompass the media, television, internet and mobile news and information services then I think that maybe, just maybe, people can make a more informed decision about who they want to vote for. If they can be bothered that is.

This all began in late September when I wrote a small story about a couple of people being spotted sunbathing in the Dutch city of The Hague on Google Earth.

Using a demo program to capture the computer screen, I added a couple fo titles using Microsoft Moviemaker and then found some royalty free sounds on a website which I added to the images. The result was a 41 second video called Snapped by a Passing Satellite (The Dutch Sunbather, Captured on Google Earth) which I uploaded to YouTube.

As many have pointed out, this is inevitable due to the nature of Wikipedia - it allows anyone to create and edit entries on whatever topic they like, without prior moderation by Wikipedia administrators.

Today we exclusively revealed the Australian pricing details for Microsoft's Office 2007 suite, which is scheduled for release at the same time as Windows Vista in January next year.

Within the story we noted the availability of a number of free online office productivity suites that are effectively competing in the same space as Office, such as Google's Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho Office.

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